102280-what-now
Content ---- ---- ---- Also a good option. There are circles in the game for a reason. If your guild doesn't have the numbers, look to do co-guild raids. A lot of guilds did this in Vanilla WoW, EQ, EQ2, and even FFXIV ARR. | |} ---- ---- I am assuming you are basing your "plummeting" statement on actual subscription numbers that you have access to to verify that it is in fact doing as you say? Still don't understand the individuals that came to this game and expected that this would not happen. They marketed this game from day one to be exactly what it is. They didn't hide that at all, but yet people still complained and left. Works for Carbine, because they at least got that initial sale. I personally have not had any problems playing with my guild and working through my raid attunement. We've been doing just fine in our group and we intend to be doing just fine in the future. Server populations be damned. I just love all the doom and gloom, it fuels me. | |} ---- well, thats nice for you. But chua over here not raider and has nothing to do. | |} ---- Sounds like Chua needs to find a guild that is active and actually doing content. If you don't want to Raid and don't want to PvP, then Chua may want to re-evaluate their subscription or find a niche in the current content you enjoy. | |} ---- ---- TLDR don't want to do any work. Work is hard, searching and finding people is hard. Game is hard. :wacko: :blink: | |} ---- ---- While I agree they did say they wanted to cater for the 5% hardcore players, they never actually said they didn't want to care for the more casual of us. If it is the case, let's hear it up and loud. Raids were indeed advertised as "hardcore" but not the vast majority of content. It seems to me they did not draw a clear line between what population their game was aiming at and what population they didn't want. They certainly did not say they wanted to make a niche game (just like Camelot Unchained for which the devs very clearly and openly stated they were aiming at a small group of PvPers only). Check their website out, the only thing presented as hardcore are raids. But now most "hardcore" player out there claim it is their game and theirs only and "filthy" casuals can get the hell out thus creating a very toxic community. I'm sure they wanted to revive hardcore raiding and 40 mans, they emphasized it enough when they first advertised raids and warplots, but not at the expense of having hardcore players only.They want the best of both worlds because they're running a company and want to make as much green as possible. And with such and important team and a game developing over 8 years, I really don't think they can survive without the casual subs. Hence the addition of housing, shiphands,adventures etc. which were most probably meant for the more casual players. But guess what? Once those casual players reach level 50 many won't content themselves with that, they find themselves with nothing else to do and no means to improve their toons. They find themselves facing a brickwall and ask the same question OP has asked himself: What now? So the problem here is that not only the casuals find themselves with nothing to do at level 50 but many hardcore players feel trapped as they can't fill up their rosters for various reasons which have been addressed several times in these forums (cf. General and Raid section). And now what? | |} ---- ---- Wildstar has one of the most comprehensive housing systems of any MMO on the market and this is right at launch.... It's got scaling content like shiphands and expeditions that you can solo with some skill, or run with a few friends, there's crafting, duels, completion (lore, path missions, quests, chellenges, etc), and plenty to do considering the game is so new. | |} ---- ---- I hate it when people justify bad devs/decisions like this just because they want to fanboy. FFX11 did it PERFECTLY fine, with up to 48 man bosses/reserve parties. So stop justifying a bad implementation, things could be and should be changed. | |} ---- Hold good sir; You want to compare XI to wildstar then we need to first come to terms with the FACT that FFXI was a JMMO with content walls that actually WERE preposterous, exp loss/ deleveling, and content so sadistic and needlessly punishing it makes W* look like a cupcake. Now, about XI and raids... it was a @#$%@#$ mess. You waste weeks farming items in sky just to force 50 people to sit in a room and drop one or two abilities on a mob when you spawned it... to get more items to maybe eventually finally pop Byako, Seiryu, Suzaku, and Genbu... to farm MORE items to maybe pop Kirin and get 2 items to fight over... And that was ONLY after the first expansion, pre RoZ there was a BS dragon that were just a literal mess of useless items and rofl-stomped dreams. over Half the time alliance HNM's failed; mostly because enmity and claiming were absolute sh!t in XI. competing alliances could and frequently would grief other alliances while they were in combat... and even when they succeeded it wasn't anything to write home about, and the system was FAR from 'perfect'. If some one came up to me, looked me in the eye, looked at Sea and all the OG CoP BS (not the post- casual catering system) , and tell me XI's system was perfect, I would literally punch them in the mouth. Rather, I would farm 6 months and let Absolute Virtue do it for me... Jeesh The only thing XI did that would help the issues in W* was the auto translate function and not separating servers by region; that let the hardcore JP linkshells work with the up and coming NA/EU Linkshells after the NA/EU release. -75 Taru RDM.WHM.BLM/SAM/DRK pre casual BS Renosky of Ramuh -Naz | |} ---- ---- It sounds like video games have desensitized you to violence. There are professionals who can help with this sort of thing. If you weren't happy with that method, maybe hardcore games aren't for you. Although, honestly, this game is pretty far from hardcore. There's no penalty on dying besides a negligible repair cost, you don't lose your gear you're wearing when you die, travel is pretty fast with no-wait ports to continents and numerous ways to get back to the main city (the taxi is the noted and terrible exception), and you can make money and get items while doing *cupcake* all else. But the leveling system in FFXI made you learn to be good at your class. If you were a bad, your group would drop you and you wouldn't get any xp, and you HAD to group to kill mobs. It's a shame carbine didn't incorporate something like that, might have made the transition into silver adventures/dungeons less abrupt and might have helped stave off these plummeting numbers. | |} ---- It sounds like you didn't play FFXI when CoP first came out, otherwise you probably would be familiar with that particular quip from when AV was literally impossible to kill with out exploiting bugs ( until they upped the level cap), and his face (like all aeryn) resembles a giant closed mouth... Very first thing I stated; FFXI was a JMMO. That necessarily means it was far more hardcore than any typical NA/EU game. everything you say about the levelling in XI is true, but what passed as the raiding system (the instanced and non-instanced HNMs) was a literal mess. I've found that while the NM adventures do a mediocre job; some of the expeditions actually do a good job of prepping folks for dynamic telegraphs and dungeon like fights. Unlike XI, W* has a lot more leeway in terms of playing your role (Tank/Heal/DPS) than XI; where everything was down to micromanaging a handful of specific precision timed skills; There's definitely a learning curve for the serious end game content; but there is also one for dungeons in general, and when that curve pops up IMO is not a deal breaker (whether its from level 10 while levelling like in XI, or at level 20 while running your first dungeon). | |} ---- In the vanilla golden age of WoW we would co-guild raid. Guild leaders would have a chat, things would be arranged. These days? Ha! All other guilds are the devil's work and instead of building bridges people would rather come to the forums and blame the developers for something which is the result of the community. | |} ---- Maybe this should have been designed as a JMMO then, and not...whatever it ends up being. I just feel like for a game that advertises raiding and group PvE, the 1-50 process needed to be much more group-based. BGs, lowbie adventures/dungeons, optional 2-man mobs, it can all be ignored and the player can solo through to 50 having no idea how to play or how to function in a group, then hits the wall of learning positioning and mechanics. It really would have been a much smoother experience overall with some/most of the leveling requiring grouping. That learning curve you mentioned doesn't even exist until 50, leveling is a cakewalk. | |} ---- They specifically developed it as a hardcore NON-JMMO. in the spirit of OG Vanilla WoW. The curve exists once you start dungeons, which ostensibly is at 20 for most folks (but not necessarily). You can ease into the positioning and mechanics in shiphands, expeditions and some adventures, but with out totally revamping the combat and progressions system it would be hard to make levelling a suitible warm up for pre-raids unless they really wanted to kill off the casual crowd. | |} ---- Im so confused ..this game is all about raiding. Thats like getting an electrician apprenticeship and then refusing to work with anything electrical once finished? | |} ---- ---- Ok, serious question, I really am not trolling here, but... so what? Plenty of games are based on crafted gear being either the best or among the best. why is it so terrible that crafted gear *can* rival Adventure and dungeon gear... wouldn't that make it easier to have folks on a level playing field to start raids if they couldn't get the RNG for dungeon / adventure drops? I honestly don't understand why its so bad, what am I missing? | |} ---- Becuz then, whats the point of spending 6 hours dungeoning and getting no gear.... when I can spend 1 hour doing dailies and farm the money to buy/craft a better item than my 6 hours investment of nothing? Or like I and many others, just have enough money already to craft an entire set of better gear, now making me wonder, wtf should I go dungeon for? It's kinda boring the dungeons to be honest, fun at first, but the exact same thing and only a tiny bit of diversity between objectives/dungeons? Boring.... Also, my FFXI point was that 40 man raiding was done quite frequently, which I had been in and seen hundreds of LS's doing. Also you required a full LS for If that game managed it, W* should be able too right? Nope, but instead of admitting that, go off on something you had an issue with about HNM claiming capability which had nothing to do with what I said. (also you were bad if you had issues with this) Lmao, some people just want to be right and prove everyone else wrong even when they are wrong. | |} ---- Because you aren't raiding, you're running dungeons and adventures? and they are fun? And you get bragging rights, and you get plenty of loot that is great (just because the purps from them are very rare / comparable to the best crafted gear doesn't make all the loot irrelevant), and because you need some of the loot for attunement (the primal patterns for 40 man), and because you are playing with a group of friends / guildies and you enjoy the content / challenge? I mean, it's not as if the only reward for doing adventures and dungeons is a slight chance for purps... | |} ---- I kinda edited my post I typo'd that entire thing, replace Raid with dungeon, or just re-read as I did and reiterate your argument in a new form. Also when people start getting mad (happens in ANY hardcore game) no it's not fun, especially when shit talking happens, now realise that I can just bypass all this gear and go straight to raiding with purely crafted items. Oh wait no I can't, because my guild doesn't do attunements. Guess it's back to the lack of diversity dungeons again. | |} ---- Find one. Not a game problem. How would you know? Going by the quote above this one. ----- You can take all the shortcuts you want but you still have to actually execute the dungeon mechanics. I've ran with players that had full crafting gear, "BIS" with good runes and all that. Still died and failed to execute mechanics. I've had my share of mess ups as well, even though I am beyond ready to raid. Gear doesn't and won't do everything for you. | |} ---- Problem is there are players that hate crafting as they take too much time levelling up so we prefer just killing primes and bosses to get the best gear available. Then we have players who took their time crafting up instead of killing bosses and mobs buying crafting components/equipment from the loot we non crafter sell after our dungeon runs. In the end it just feels like we are doing more tedious work for the best gear in adventure and dungeon while the crafters just buy stuff from us and craft gear up which is more convenient for them. It doesn't help the biggest rebuttal after the gold loot nerf, happens to be 'just do crafting instead of whining like a baby as crafting equipment is better than the loot in vet dungeon' which means we are wasting our time doing dungeons instead of taking a short cut like crafting. | |} ---- ---- You don't have to craft; make friends with crafters. You can buy crafted gear as easily as crafters can. and honestly all the gear in the world isn't going to help a bad player in pre-raid. As a crafter, I can tell you the more tedious work is NOT the adventures or dungeons; those are engaging, require skill, and can be pretty fun with the right group. Tedious is the weeks to months it takes to even unlock the schematics for the best crafted gear, not because of skill, but because we can only get 1 eldan fragment a day from the Elder-craft gating quest. | |} ---- Doesn't matter because it's still a short cut, you like doing crafting because it's fun for you and your crafting gear is also better after the nerf gold loot. We hate them because it is tedious and boring, this is the same as scientist doing an explorer work in the path system. Also why do I need to give lots of coins that I had earn painstakingly to a crafter that can craft them in less time it takes to do vet dungeon. It's still a short cut and you only need to do fewer dungeon run because you already crafted the best gear. While we have to do it repeatedly because of the stupid new RNG system for gold loot in dungeons. | |} ---- It's an MMORPG so no it's not all about raiding. Some will rush to 50 in 3 days because they think that's where the fun begin. For me the fun begin at the character creation, questing, discovering the world, the lore and finally the end-game. I'm still in the first part. There is so much to do and i'm enjoying myself a lot. | |} ---- I see where you're coming from. I think we have radically different opinions for the intent of vet dungeons though. When I run dungeons, it's either to help guildies learn the fights for future silver medal runs, or to actually do a silver medal run for attunement. If nice loot drops, then so be it. I would burn out so fast if I did vet dungeon loot grinding because that will seriously kill the game experience for me. Even if I didn't have crafted gear, I still wouldn't do it that. Adventure grind? Big maybe. Doubt it though. I definitely see what you mean though about crafting gear "diluting" dungeon gear even though it's challenging content. Feels like you swing away at a dungeon for however long and don't see that much return. Some people value loot and some people value social happiness. I'm the latter camp. | |} ---- You realize you just quoted yourself AND called yourself confused, right? Do you even know what your opinion is for this game? | |} ---- And earning lots of cash in the AH after selling the best crafted gear after the nerf gold loot hits for credd. Nice wintrading by the way. | |} ---- http://i.imgur.com/Yo7Ik.gif | |} ---- Dungeons are part of attunement... you need primal patterns from them for 40 man attunement. Also you need the experience and time to develop the skills for raid content. If your guild doesn't do atunement, and you want to... join an attunement circle. I've seen a bunch of them pop up recently, and thats what the circle system is for; to get good groups of folks doing things that your guild may not be doing. My point on XI was that FFXI 40 man content was few and far between, and a mess all around. a full alliance was 18 people, (3 groups of 6) and that's the most that would usually be fielded in most circumstances for most content. The exceptions were the real nasty secret HNM's, and that wasn't technically 40-man content, it was just so difficult that Linkshells would field two alliances so that groups could switch in and out of a fight or use a single ability (e.g. RDM/DRK for stuns). FFXI was an awesome game, and I loved it to death; but it's alliance content makes warplots look like well organized affairs. It's not really much of a short cut. You still have to complete the attunement, you can't bypass it just with gear. You don't need purples from dungeons or adventures for raiding, and you were never meant to need them. They were supposed to be tremendously rare for bragging rights; not necessary items for raid progression. Raid sets WERE intended as necessary for progression (need a good bit of the 20 man gear for 40 man raids). Even if a 'crafter' bought the perfect crafted gear for every slot (impossible enough due to RNG on crafted gear), they would still have to successfully complete attunement... what other hoops do you have to hoop through that they don't ? | |} ---- As I mention earlier you need to do less dungeon runs than other non crafters because you can craft better gear so it is not necessary to grind dungeons all the time. Nice deflection | |} ---- Time to re-acquire crafted gear due to bad rng: approx 10 seconds (clicking craft again) Time to re-acquire ANY OTHER DROPPED GEAR due to bad rng: hope it drops again (1hour to multiple weeks) seems like a legit complaint you have there pal Oh btw, crafted gear beats GA gear rather often. So crafted gear is pretty decent for starting 40man, if anyone were able to attune. | |} ---- Where did you get "wintrading" from: Lol, I guess being decent guildmate and actually helping people learn the game is wintrading. You're dense. So much for a decent conversation/discussion. | |} ---- I can promise you that raids are not just a dash/dps race. Some of hte fights are very challenging. This games raids reminds me of Rifts raids ( Hammerknell/ID/ Storm Legion 20mans ) is that once you learn the dance.. you can dance all day. There is some but not a lot of RNG involved. Enough to keep it interesting but not enough to keep you wiping constantly. My guild is on Ohmna and I am having a blast. The fights I don't know really well I do terrible on or die but once i learn the fight and know my job/ Limited Action Set. Its a lot of fun. I still have ot watch what im doing constantly and constantly be on the move.. but its fun and its manageable. | |} ---- Funny how housing is always the first line of defense. It's like people just assume that it even appeals to everyone...shiphands and expeditions are good once, and with the quests being a rote and mediocre experience why would one be interest in completing them all lol? The PVP is crap and the community is lukewarm at best, the pseudo elitism gets real old real quick. | |} ---- it doesnt help that even for those of us who love housing and roleplaying, a lot of the neater housing bits are gated behind either having lots of money from dailies to buy them, or farming endlessly for them | |} ---- Well even if you don't do it other crafter will and how do I know you actually didn't do it. Also wintrading for better cash has noting to do with being a decent guild mate and actually helping people learn the game and you know it. | |} ----